Chinese students’ knowledge and attitude towards sustainability : focus on IKEA and their sustainability work

Consumers consider themselves being able to change their consumption behavior and by that make a difference. This makes it easier for organizations in the usage of sustainability in their marketing strategy in order to attract customers and keep the already existing ones. As one of the world’s largest furniture retailing company, IKEA has a well established sustainability policy. They believe that they have a responsibility to control the impact of their business and the role that they play in society. The aim with this research is to contribute to IKEA’s awareness of the Chinese students’ level of knowledge when discussing sustainability in China. This thesis studied the Chinese students’ knowledge and attitude towards IKEA’s sustainability work. The purpose is to establish an understanding of the students’ viewpoint when discussing environmental friendly purchases. It was also within the scope of interest to investigate whether IKEA manage to reach the selected group of respondents. The study was conducted with a quantitative method. Data was collected through a distribution of self-completion questionnaire with 120 respondents.The analysis of this study showed that 57,3% of the respondents have never heard of IKEA before, which leads to next analysis where they believe that IKEA should put more effort in marketing their sustainability work